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NFT: Ken Burns- Cancer: The Emperor of Maladies

Headhunter : 3/25/2015 7:49 am
3 night documentary starts 3/30 PM on PBS.
The book was outstanding.  
WideRight : 3/25/2015 8:19 am : link
And Burns is amoung the best documentary filmakers.

The difference between this and Baseball or the Civil War is that the title implies he is sticking to a script, which is a different approach - he would take a subject on from every angle. As good as Emperor was, it's still a single vantage point with the author's bias. The book is now also relatively old, leaving us out of all the implications of where this field is going. Hopefully he is going beyond the scope of the book.
This is the one subject  
Headhunter : 3/25/2015 8:23 am : link
I'm a little kid who sticks his fingers in his ears, stomps his his feet and refuses to discuss it. I grew up where you never said the word out loud
and people whispered it or just called it the Big C. I am going to grow up and watch and hopefully learn not to fear that word
Thats part of the problematic history of the disease  
WideRight : 3/25/2015 8:29 am : link
that made Emperor so good. Seemingly so horrific that we would declare "war" on it.
And worse: the word has been co-opted  
WideRight : 3/25/2015 8:47 am : link
There are locker room "cancers". Terrrorism is a "cancer"

Can't really approach such a disease rationally when its loaded with so much negativity. Burns is going to knock this one out of the park.
If this documentary takes the fear out of the word  
Headhunter : 3/25/2015 8:57 am : link
for a large percentage of people who will watch it, then it will have a long lasting imprint
that and the fact that  
ColHowPepper : 3/25/2015 9:16 am : link
science and biotech are beginning to make some real headway in understanding and mitigating various forms of it. Were it not for this, maybe there would be less of an appetite for taking it on? In my case, probably so.
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